Does America need a terrorist financier to secure its “freedom”? Sami al-Arian thinks so. His National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom poses as a watchdog for the Constitution, but he has focused his lobbying efforts on repealing anti-terrorist legislation. While Sami al-Arianhimself has been arrested for being a prime financier for Palestinian Islamic Jihad (and likely one of its three founders), his political movement continues to threaten homeland security.

Al-Arian founded the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF) in 1997 as a reaction to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996. The coalition’s stated goal “is to help change the political climate to support due process and First Amendment rights by facilitating effective legal and political action.” However, it does not take long to connect the dots between NCPPF, American Marxists, and Muslim extremists apologizing for Islamic terrorism both here and abroad.

Sami al-Arian, of course, was a professor at University of South Florida who was arrested in 2003 – after an eight year investigation – for his involvement in fundraising for PIJ. PIJ is responsible for a series of terrorist attacks in the Middle East, which have killed more than 100 people, including two Americans. Referring to a manifesto that was discovered during the investigation of al-Arian, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said, “the manifesto refers to the United States as ‘The Great Satan America,’ and indicates that the only purpose of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad is to destroy Israel and to end all Western influence in the region." NBC's “Dateline” obtained a video of al-Arian in which he screams, “Let us damn America. Let us damn Israel. Let us damn their allies until death.” Other news outlets uncovered letters al-Arian wrote in the mid 1990’s to solicit support for terrorist bombers in Israel. In the letters, he states, “I call upon you to try to extend true support to the Jihad effort in Palestine so that operations such as these can continue.” With or without its founder, the NCPPF continues to facilitate this goal.

The NCPPF website simply reads, “We are a coalition whose members are organizations.” The organizations the NCPPF includes as members run the gambit from pro-Marxist Palestinian groups to anti-Israeli Palestinian groups, and from pro-Communist American groups to pro-Palestinian-terrorist American groups.

Two members of the NCPPF are the Committee for Imad Hamad and the Committee for Justice for the “L.A. Eight.” Both groups seek to free alleged Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) members from U.S. prisons. The PFLP is a pro-Marxist Palestinian group that the State Department has deemed to be a terrorist organization. The PFLP regards itself as a “progressive vanguard organization of the Palestinian working class" whose goal is "liberating all of Palestine and establishing a democratic socialist Palestinian state." To this end, PFLP has claimed responsibility for a number of high profile airline highjackings, including the four Palestinian airplane highjackings and bombings in 1970 that led to the expulsion of radical Palestinian organizations in Jordan, in what has come to be known as “Black September.”

Another member of NCPPF is the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). The CCR, which was founded by lawyer William Kunstler in 1966, is an advocacy organization that utilizes litigation in protest to what it deems are social injustices. Kunstler once stated, “The thing I'm most interested in is keeping people on the street who will forever alter the character of this society: the revolutionaries.” Kunstler’s Center follows this tenor, and the CCR has represented a number of revolutionaries with leftist, Communist, and even terrorist agendas. The CCR has litigated for the Armed Forces of National Liberation, which was responsible for more than 50 bomb attacks on U.S. political and military targets between 1974 and 1983. It has represented Basheer Hameed and Abdul Majid – members of the Black Panther Party convicted of killing two police officers. Other cop-killers the center has legally supported include the United Freedom Front, a violent, 60’s radical group that funded its homeland terrorism by conducting a series of bank robberies from Connecticut to Virginia, murdering policemen en route. Their reign of terror concluded with their bombing of the U.S. Capitol building in 1983. Most recently, the CCR has set its sights on the War on Terror and the Patriot Act, opposing everything from military tribunals to the detention of those with terrorist ties. CCR has certainly demonstrated that its 30-years of support of what it calls “revolutionaries” is surely not in the best interest of our society.

Also serving as a member of NCPPF is the American Muslim Council (AMC), whose founder, Abdurahman Alamoudi, like al-Arian, was arrested for his ties to Islamic terrorism. Aside from being the founder and executive director of the AMC, Abdurahman Alamoudi has been an Islamic affairs advisor for the Clinton administration; an official appointee of the Pentagon in charge of choosing Muslim chaplains; and was a State Department-selected Goodwill Ambassador to the Muslim nations. Alamoudi’s private life, however, was occupied with financing anti-American/anti-Israeli terrorist groups and nations: from the Libyan regime of Muammar Qadhafi, to Hezbollah and Hamas, to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Addressing a group of Palestinian-terrorist supporters in front of the White house in 2000, Alamoudi acknowledged, “I have been labeled…as being a supporter of Hamas. Anybody supporters of Hamas here…We are all supporters of Hamas...I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hezbollah.” Alamoudi was arrested in Washington, D.C., upon returning from Libya, and was charged with receiving $340,000 in cash from Libya’s World Islamic Call Society, a state-sponsor of terrorism, with the intent to distribute the funds to violent anti-Western terrorist organizations in Syria and elsewhere.

Although al-Arian is the founder of the NCPPF, the current executive director is Kit Gage. Aside from her work for NCPPF, Gage is a longtime legal advocate for the proletariat, and has served as the Executive Vice President of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The NLG wasfounded in 1936 by a caucus of the Communist Party. To this day, the NLG remains an active advocate of Communist principals, legally representing a host of individuals and organizations it sees as integral to its “anti-imperialist” cause. The NLG has supported Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Marxist guerilla group Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation in El Salvador, the militant Communist New People’s Army in the Philippines, the dictatorial Marxist regime of Fidel Castro, and the Viet Cong. The NLG has brought its brand of Communist sponsorship into the 21st century, backing public civil disorder and litigating on behalf of violent protestors of the War on Terror. In this age of mass communication, this support has taken on the form of internet-transmitted press releases, one of which was entitled, "National Lawyers Guild Supports Acts Of Civil Disobedience In Protesting Preemptive Strike Against Iraq."

The financier of NCPPF is as well-riddled with ties to both terrorist nations and Communist dictatorships. The NCPPF began with substantial seed money from The Interreligous Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), and continued to grow from their funding. The IFCO’s dubious ties to Communist and Islamic terrorist nations and organizations is conspicuous, to the extent that its board members publicly support anti-American causes. In 2000, founder and executive director of IFCO, Reverend Lucius Walker, declared in Havana, “Long live the creative example of the Cuban Revolution! Long live the wisdom and heartfelt concern for the poor of the world by Fidel Castro!”

Since the start of the War in Iraq, Walker and the IFCO switched gears from pro-Castro to pro-Saddam/anti-Bush rhetoric. In a 2002 interview, Walker stated, “George Bush is a bloodthirsty killer…He is a warmonger…We have to stop the war, but, more than that, we have to understand what is the underlying cause of terrorism in the world. It is poor people trying to stop the oppression of Israel and the United States…we must resist the policies of our own government.” As with many antiwar groups, IFCO invokes violent protests to elicit support for its cause. Aside from the NCPPF, the IFCO funds such radical rabble-rousers as Refuse and Resist, and Not In Our Name (NION). Refuse and Resist calls for “massive resistance” and “vociferous and determined renunciation” of what it calls a “Resurgent America.” Its goals in recent years include calling for the release of accused cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, demanding the discharge of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, and seeking to stop the passage of the Academic Bill of Rights. Not in our Name, an activist organization seeking to end the War on Terror, states in their “Pledge of Resistance,” “We pledge alliance with those who have come under attack.” Serving as a board member of NION is Clark Kissinger, who is also a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party – a Maoist group considered radical even by its fellow Marxists.

Although al-Arian sits safely behinds bars for his involvement as a terrorist financier, his group, the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, is still operating within our borders, supporting and advocating a slew of radical, violent, and terrorist anti-American organizations and nations. The NCPPF, as with so many of its affiliate organizations, hides behind a mask of what they regard as social advocacy, but which is in fact a call for the dismantling of the United States. The NCPPF, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Interreligous Foundation for Community want nothing more than to transform America according to their vision, and they are not above using or encouraging violence and terrorism in attainment of this goal. As the War on Terror continues, those groups fanning the fire of anti-American fervor are increasingly coming from within America itself.

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